How is K-Meleon?

I use firefox as my main browser and am happy with it, but I have noticed that a few people here are using K-Meleon. I am not really ready to give up FF for another browser as I am so used to it and love the added functions that extensions can provide. But I was thinking of using K-Meleon on the side a bit, is it really faster than FF? Does anyone use it as their main browser? BTW I tried Opera and did not really like it too much.

 

Ronjor

How's the security of K-Meleon?

Better than FF?

Do you have to update the security like FF?

Cheers

 

Ronjor is right on! Namely, K-meleon is fast. It is a tweaker's delight. It is THE browser for libertarians & minimalist-fans. If Firefox is a SUV, then K-meleon is a BMW (& Internet Explorer is a Yugo.)

Basically, Firefox & K-meleon will share any security holes that are discovered in the Gecko engine 1.7.8 -- which is what they have in common. Thus far, holes in Gecko 1.7.8 have been rare. They have been immediately announced (no M$-type cover-ups) and quickly patched (no M$-type foot-dragging).

 

Thanks Ronjor & Bellgamin for your explanation.

Ok I will stick to FF for the moment.

Cheers

Chew

 

Hi,

I installed K-Meleon a couple of days ago & although I won't be jumping off of the FF bandwagon any time soon I find KM to be a very decent browser.

Installing themes / skins was a problem for me at first ..... but after discovering it was a problem with the unzipping procedure, ( an unnecessary sub folder was created ) everything is fine.

Also, the info about security in the posts above is good to know as I was curious about that issue. Good to know !!

HR

 

Fast rendering, very fast launch, about two seconds compared to four seconds for Firefox on my PC. Also faster navigation through menus (nice if you access bookmarks from the menu bar) as K-Meleon uses the native Windows UI rather than Firefox's XUL.

See this thread at the K-Meleon forum for an overview of security. The official release is based on Mozilla 1.7.5, which is susceptible to a javascript exploit - see my post in this thread for a link to test the vulnerability and how to patch it. Alternatively, you could try one of the unofficial versions; I'm using one called the Wald Wolf which is very similar to the official release but is based on Mozilla 1.7.7. It's hosted on Rapidshare as a self-extracting 7zip archive and you can get it here.

edit: just found this on the K-Meleon forum; an easy way to update to Mozilla 1.7.7.

Many Firefox extensions can be reproduced in K-Meleon using macros, although the process of editing macro and menu configuration files may seem daunting in comparison. There is unfortunately nothing resembling Adblock, although Proxomitron could be used to cover that.

There's no obligation to switch from Firefox to K-Meleon; I found myself using K-Meleon more and more and now it's my default browser. I like the speed and configurability, and I was never a heavy extensions user in Firefox. There's nothing to lose by giving it a try. If you do, it's worth thoroughly exploring the Edit - Preferences menu, the View menu and the Tools menu, and the K-Meleon website (the menus and the website are a little, how shall I put it, 'unstructured') . You can copy the contents of your Firefox Plugins folder into the K-Meleon Plugins folder to get flash, quicktime etc. working.

 

Almost forgot to ask does it require that you have Sun Java installed?

 

As with all Mozilla browsers, if you want to use Java it has to be Sun Java.

 

Naw, I dont use Java, nor do I have it installed. I was just wondering if K-Meleon needed it to run. But I assume it does not.

 

You are correct. As is true for any browser, K-mel needs java in order to render java-encoded stuff; but it does not need java in order to function.

I have java on my box, primarily because it is needed when I run the broadband speed tests at DSLR. Otherwise, my firewall (outpost) is configured to disable java unless I specifically enable it.